Saw an interesting suggestion today that Lohse could sign a minor league contract with a huge salary bump for making the ML roster. Apparently signing a minor league deal exempts a player from generating compensation for his former team. Would definitely **** off ol' Bud.

That being said, I think this year is an anomaly. Teams signed "Type A" guys in the past - I'm really surprised teams are being so scared off by the loss of a draft pick, especially teams that would only have to give up a second rounder.

I think it's because Lohse isn't you're typical Type A player. His last two seasons have been great but before that he was plagued by injury and up and down performances, and he doesn't really have #1 ace type stuff.

May make players think twice about rejecting a qualifying offer. The Cards knew he'd reject it - he could have screwed them by accepting, as I highly doubt they wanted to pay him $13M+, even if it was for one season.

Posted by Jtpsops on 2/23/2013 1:50:00 PM (view original):May make players think twice about rejecting a qualifying offer. The Cards knew he'd reject it - he could have screwed them by accepting, as I highly doubt they wanted to pay him $13M+, even if it was for one season.

And from the opposite perspective, I would at least question whether it's a better idea at this point for Lohse to sit out half a year in hopes of signing a multi-year deal after the draft than sign a one-year deal with the Cardinals and try again next offseason. Certainly there's an argument to be made there, but if we assume that he at least WANTS to pitch, and wants to pitch for a team capable of doing some winning, it's not a horrible idea from his perspective either.

I'd give it maybe another week or two, but I agree with dahs, if it doesn't look like you're getting the pick, sign him up on a one-year deal. There is little risk and if he comes anywhere close to last year, innings wise, he'll probably remain a Type A Free Agent. They could try it all again next season, and hope their young guys are more developed.

It's really tougher for Lohse. Boras is certainly going to be in his ear telling him to wait for a multi-year offer, even if it takes till after the draft. And he has to swallow his pride and say "hey, I rejected your $13.3 million offer a few months ago, but I'll take $4 or $5 million less now." Even if it is really the best thing for him.

He'll wait. Someone will suffer an injury and he'll get a multi-year offer.

Say what you want about Boras but his track record says he's effective at what he does. Two examples:
A-Roid opts out of a huge deal. Everyone says "He'll never get that in the open market." Yanks offer him a similar deal with what looked like easily attained incentives that makes it a bigger deal.
Fielder sits out. FA, for all intents and purposes, is over. People are talking about him taking a 1 year deal for big money and "trying again next year." He gets a huge, multi-year deal at the end of January.

He's good at what he does, but he's not perfect. See Ryan Madson last year. Also see Lohse earlier in his career. The Phillies offered him something like 3 years/21-24 million to stay, he rejected it, the Phillies moved on, and there wasn't a market for him so he signed at 1 year, 4.25 million. Now, it ultimately worked out because he had a career year and got 4/41 from the Cardinals the next offseason, but I'm sure that wasn't really how he drew it up.